South Sudan: Worsening Food Crisis in Swamplands

Nyal — In the vast swamplands of South Sudan's Sudd region, tens of thousands of recently displaced people (IDPs) are living with little food and no sanitation facilities on inaccessible islands, according to local officials. They fled after attackers, allegedly from Rumbek (Lakes State in central South Sudan), swarmed across the county burning houses and raiding cattle on 7 February.

Flying over the county headquarters of Panyjiar in southern Unity State, at least half of the houses appear to have been burned to the ground. The IDPs on the islands need food, but for now there is no way to reach them. "If you don't have a canoe, you can't go there," said Simon Kuol, coordinator of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission of Panyjiar County.

On 27 February, the UN's top humanitarian official, Valerie Amos, expressed deep concern over "the grave humanitarian situation in South Sudan, where, despite the recent ceasefire agreement, the lives of millions of civilians are threatened by lack of food, outbreaks of disease, and continued violence."

Sitting in the shade of a palm tree on an island an hour's canoe ride from Nyal, a town in Panyjiar, Rebecca Nyakang said her seven children have eaten nothing but the blackened roots of a water lily plant and the skin of palm nuts for 14 days in a row.

Nyakang is living with her husband and children on a tiny mosquito-infested island just a few hundred metres wide surrounded by thousands of acres of swamp.

They waded for three hours through bull-rushes in waist-high water to get here. She holds out three water lily tubers like dirty beetroot, which she scavenged from beneath the water. "It's not nutritious, it's just to survive." (While very low on calories, such roots do have some nutritional content^[1].)

They are stockpiling these wild foods for April when the rains come and they return to their home in Nyal to plant their crops.

There is no food at all at home now, they say, because floods destroyed the crops last year, and supply routes have been cut off due to the conflict. But by April, it may be too late to give the assistance they need. Nyal is in effect landlocked, the only road is impassable, and the landing strip is not operational during the rains.

References

1. ^{^} nutritional content (www.livestrong.com)